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Ferment   /fərmˈɛnt/  /fˈərmɛnt/   Listen
Ferment

noun
1.
A state of agitation or turbulent change or development.  Synonyms: agitation, fermentation, tempestuousness, unrest.  "Social unrest"
2.
A substance capable of bringing about fermentation.
3.
A process in which an agent causes an organic substance to break down into simpler substances; especially, the anaerobic breakdown of sugar into alcohol.  Synonyms: fermentation, fermenting, zymolysis, zymosis.
verb
(past & past part. fermented; pres. part. fermenting)
1.
Be in an agitated or excited state.  "Her mind ferments"
2.
Work up into agitation or excitement.
3.
Cause to undergo fermentation.  Synonym: work.  "The vintner worked the wine in big oak vats"
4.
Go sour or spoil.  Synonyms: sour, turn, work.  "The wine worked" , "The cream has turned--we have to throw it out"



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"Ferment" Quotes from Famous Books



... now—what a bargain! It was not that the ideals of his college days were tarnished, but he was a man of business now, and if he would take the old man's land for a song—it was because others of his kind would do the same! But why bother, he asked himself again, when his brain was in a ferment with a colossal scheme that would make dizzy the magnates who would some day drive their roadways of steel into those wild hills. So he shook himself free of the question, which passed from his mind only with a transient wonder as to who it was that had told of him to the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... "I am a genuine child of the times, and I am not ashamed of it. The greatest intellects of the day are all in a state of inner ferment. Every individual of significance is just as divided against himself as humanity on the whole. I refer, of course, only to the leading European races. I embody the Pope and Luther, William II and Robespierre, Bismarck and Bebel, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... "From 1780 to 1830," says M. Taine, "Germany produced all the ideas of our historical age, and during another half-century, perhaps another century, notre grande affaire sera de les repenser." He is inclined to compare the influence of German ideas on the modern world to the ferment of the Renaissance. No spiritual force "more original, more universal, more fruitful in consequences of every sort and bearing, more capable of transforming and remaking everything presented to it, has arisen during the last three hundred years. Like the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pulled at the chair. Her face twitched under her veil. She looked almost terribly alive, as if indeed her mind were in a state of ferment. Yet there was in her aspect also a sort of half-submerged sluggishness. Despite her vindictive agitation, her purposeful venom, she seemed already partially bound by a cloud of sleep. That she had cast away her power to charm as useless was the greatest tribute ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... great ferment in the departments of the Allier, the Nievre, and the Cher, proud to possess a poet capable of rivalry with the glories of Paris. Paquita la Sevillane, by Jan Diaz, was published in the Echo du Morvan, a review which for eighteen months maintained ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac


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